This story is really interesting. I'd just go here and read it all.
RCP: Scratch that question. When not one single, solitary Republican vote can be found in the House of Representatives to support the president's $819 billion stimulus package, it's pretty clear that the GOP caucus has been meeting in a soundproof room.
What I've been hearing from Republicans in both the House and Senate has been a kind of attenuated, distorted echo of the economic doctrine that the party has preached, if not always practiced, since the Reagan years. It's perfectly appropriate, of course, to ask whether a specific spending proposal would have the desired stimulative effect; indeed, some items were removed from the stimulus bill for that reason. But underlying the Republican criticism has been a familiar formula: more tax cuts, fewer spending initiatives.
But Americans know that this philosophy has already taken us as far as it could. Americans know that taxes can only be cut by so much before the federal government's effectiveness inevitably suffers. Americans know that that spending money doesn't necessarily mean wasting it. Americans know that the economic crisis means that taking the position that government is inherently oppressive, if not fundamentally evil, is now intellectually bankrupt, because government is the only instrument we have in the high-stakes attempt to induce financial and economic recovery.
If Republicans hadn't broken the bank with drunken-sailorish spending during most of George W. Bush's time in the White House, their complaints about the cost of the stimulus package and its impact on future deficits would be more credible. As things stand, we have to let actions speak: absolute solidarity among House Republicans in voting no. Read the whole thing.
